Interesting. Wonder what Mulcair will say this time? Will he trot out his "As a lawyer . . ." routine again?

---

Two more former NDP staffers who say they were unfairly dismissed have accused the party of trying to convince them not to file a complaint against the elected members who employed them.

Bouchra Taibi, who was working for MP Helene Leblanc, and Melanie Bellemare, who was working for MP Francois Choquette, have each filed lawsuits claiming wrongful dismissal.

Like Fabiola Ferro, who took legal action earlier this month against New Democrat MP Sylvain Chicoine for wrongful termination, Taibi and Bellemare argue the party tried to stifle their attempts to come forward.

These things come out because the NDP has protection for its office staff under a union. I see grievances in an 80 member union local about 3-4 times a year. I dont see them in another nearby non union workplace locally that has 400 workers because people are far more wary of coming forward to bring a complaint. Again dont assume all complaints are valid. That maybe the kind of knee jerk approach to justice JT likes but it serves little else than punditry and partisan politics. Employers offering to settle issues by separating people who are antagonistic towards each other is a good way to solve problems.

Incredible that you would act here as a victim-blamer and apologist for abuse, just because of your devotion to the NDP. It's this kind of hockey-fan partisanship, on every front, which disenfranchises people and makes real democracy impossible.

BS. I dont know how you read that into what Im saying but thats a hell of a slander when you cant win an argument.

And we know why especially in the case of anything that affects the libs. Its CBC thinking JT is gonna save them from the fiscal axe. Even tho he wont the libs have been cutting the CBC for decades. Its why the libs teamed up with Harper to bash the ndp in the partisan BOIE even tho they had no evidence of wrong doing.

Pierre, that is a total NDP fiction. The Liberals only have ONE MP on the Board of Internal Economy. The NDP have TWO. The Liberals hardly have any influence on committees in this term since they are currently the 3rd party in the House of Commons.

The NDP is trying to blame others for the fact that it decided to play very close to the rules and got itself ensnared in a scandal. Why can't the NDP ever admit it's done something wrong for once?

Even Ken S. admitted on another thread that the NDP should have been more careful in how they handled the satelite offices. They were even trying to open one in Saskatchewan - a province where they have no Federal seats. They were sacrificing the spirit of the law in order to maximize their electoral advantage.

It's not the fault of the Liberals that the NDP got itself into this mess - did the Liberals force the NDP to open satelite offices? Did the Liberals tell the NDP they should try opening one in Saskatchewan? Come on. And as much as I dislike the Conservatives, it's not their fault, either. You can't blame them for taking advantage of this lack of judgment by Mulcair.

Its not fiction its reported fact. The libs voted with the tories on the issue of NDP use of workers in satellite offices. They voted in favor fo that bizarre temporary rule. That they have one member is irrelevant. They sided with the tories on it.

Interesting. Wonder what Mulcair will say this time? Will he trot out his "As a lawyer . . ." routine again?

---

Two more former NDP staffers who say they were unfairly dismissed have accused the party of trying to convince them not to file a complaint against the elected members who employed them.

Bouchra Taibi, who was working for MP Helene Leblanc, and Melanie Bellemare, who was working for MP Francois Choquette, have each filed lawsuits claiming wrongful dismissal.

Like Fabiola Ferro, who took legal action earlier this month against New Democrat MP Sylvain Chicoine for wrongful termination, Taibi and Bellemare argue the party tried to stifle their attempts to come forward.

I'm not in a position to comment on the allegations, but as the NDP becomes more of a force to be reckoned with, we have to expect these kinds of negative stories to come out more and more often. We are dealing with opponents who wouldn't hesitate to use a picutre of Thomas Mulcair picking his nose in kindergarten if they could. Good conduct bordering on perfection is important, but the NDP also needs a sort of "rapid response" force to be able to deal with these stories as they come out.

Media manipulation 101. That's the reality the NDP is going to have to contend with.

Its pure media manipulation. The cases seems pretty mild. Are we to believe that the staff under libs and tories in the past havent had issues? Look at the long running story about Dexter's 2000$ laptop in NS. Jesus did they ever spin that one. People not realizing the cost wasnt the hardware it was also the asoftware that had to be highly secure for a premier to use. But the media and libs ran with that BS for months.

Again if the union didnt pursue their cases and risked being sued by them for misrepresentation (refusal to hear a greivance) its that their cases were not good.

I'm not in a position to comment on the allegations, but as the NDP becomes more of a force to be reckoned with, we have to expect these kinds of negative stories to come out more and more often. We are dealing with opponents who wouldn't hesitate to use a picutre of Thomas Mulcair picking his nose in kindergarten if they could. Good conduct bordering on perfection is important, but the NDP also needs a sort of "rapid response" force to be able to deal with these stories as they come out.

Media manipulation 101. That's the reality the NDP is going to have to contend with.

So the reason multiple staffers are complaining about NDP practices is because it is 'a force to be reckoned with'? Based on its current trajectory, the NDP is at risk of dropping down to 3rd again in the next election. It certainly isn't in contention to form government, and winning the Official Opposition is also increasingly at risk.

As KenS said himself on another thread, the NDP chose to play close to the rules on the issue of the satellite offices, and then when it got into a mess, it tried to blame other people for its predicament. Mulcair showed no remorse whatsoever and the NDP is fighting the re-payment in court. John Ivison said this damaged the NDP's credibility, and while he is normally too right-wing for my liking, Ivison may have been correct on this one.

Now we have not just one staffer complaining, but three. Mulcair tried to portray the woman who brought the first complaint earlier in the month as some sort of nut. Well now he's going to have to explain why two more staffers are complaining. It will be harder to smear these complainants now that there are more of them.

3 complaints out of hundreds working for different mps in different offices. And relatively modest complaints that are work related. Not the kind of serious harassment or sexual assault issues that the 2 ndp mps faced. Course the same thing happens in the other camps and it never got reported like this. At any given time you will get disgruntled workers who claim some form of mistreatment. If those claims had any merit the union would have pursued them.

This is a media driven witchhunt. The same way they managed to get the senate scandal off the radar they are gonna get the JT is lite between the ears off thr radar for a few weeks while these complaints work themselves through the courts.

A little info for those who dont know. You have 10 000$ you can get any lawyer to represent you on any work related complaint. I had one worker who had claimed discrimination and hadnt gone through her probation to get into the union and got my local employer into court and settle herself a couple years wages. This kind of thing happens all the time. Question is why is it worthy of national media? Oh yea cuz the NDP made pretty boy look bad again.

I can assure you that staff being fired or quitting in a huff is EXTREMELY common on parliament hill and in MPs offices. We will never hear about it from the Liberals or CPC because since their staff are not unionized - their staff have no protection whatsoever and can be fired anytime and anywhere for no reason and staff have no recourse - so we will never hear about. If we had a file on every Liberal of Conservative staffer who was fired since the 2011 election or left under duress you would have a file folder that would be a foot thick!!

Mulcair said someone was a "nut"? I'd like to read that quote. Thanks!

Please re-read what I wrote. I didn't say Mulcair called her a nut - I said he tried to portray her as one. He tried to portray her as some lone, unstable, aggrieved individual who was just out to settle a score.

Now we see that it wasn't an isolated incident and that she has some company.

This is a media driven witchhunt. The same way they managed to get the senate scandal off the radar they are gonna get the JT is lite between the ears off thr radar for a few weeks while these complaints work themselves through the courts.

A little info for those who dont know. You have 10 000$ you can get any lawyer to represent you on any work related complaint. I had one worker who had claimed discrimination and hadnt gone through her probation to get into the union and got my local employer into court and settle herself a couple years wages. This kind of thing happens all the time. Question is why is it worthy of national media? Oh yea cuz the NDP made pretty boy look bad again.

Pierre, do you really believe some of the stuff you type?

The media is not going on a witch hunt of the NDP. Why is it that every time the NDP is involved in a scandal it is someone else's fault? I asked this question the other day. It was the same thing with the satellite offices. No attempt at taking personal responsibility there, either.

And Justin Trudeau just mopped the floor with Mulcair & the NDP again in last week's by-elections. It's the NDP that is trying to change the channel right now -- the media doesn't need to do anything to help Trudeau. He's doing great. Today's Abacus poll confirms the large majority of Quebecers (67%) think Trudeau is the most likely to win the next election compared to Mulcair.

The media is not going on a witch hunt of the NDP. Why is it that every time the NDP is involved in a scandal it is someone else's fault?

Pierre is ridiculing, mocking, and discrediting women who are complaining of workplace discrimination, in situations where he is totally, and obviously blissfully, ignorant of any of the details.

I suggest that this kind of victim-blaming be met with the utter contempt it deserves. Don't engage him. It's embarrassing.

Stop making shit up. Im not ridiculing Im not mocking Im saying plainly what the result of the union greivances was. And it was a Union that was pro liberal in the last Ontario election so that 'union are only pro NDP' mantra is BS.

This is a media driven witchhunt. The same way they managed to get the senate scandal off the radar they are gonna get the JT is lite between the ears off thr radar for a few weeks while these complaints work themselves through the courts.

A little info for those who dont know. You have 10 000$ you can get any lawyer to represent you on any work related complaint. I had one worker who had claimed discrimination and hadnt gone through her probation to get into the union and got my local employer into court and settle herself a couple years wages. This kind of thing happens all the time. Question is why is it worthy of national media? Oh yea cuz the NDP made pretty boy look bad again.

Pierre, do you really believe some of the stuff you type?

The media is not going on a witch hunt of the NDP. Why is it that every time the NDP is involved in a scandal it is someone else's fault? I asked this question the other day. It was the same thing with the satellite offices. No attempt at taking personal responsibility there, either.

And Justin Trudeau just mopped the floor with Mulcair & the NDP again in last week's by-elections. It's the NDP that is trying to change the channel right now -- the media doesn't need to do anything to help Trudeau. He's doing great. Today's Abacus poll confirms the large majority of Quebecers (67%) think Trudeau is the most likely to win the next election compared to Mulcair.

When the instances of timely nit picking on the NDP are being given equal air time with severe corruption or abuse allegations by the NDP 's rivals its not a conspiracy its just the facts of what is going on in the plain light of day. We've seen 3 instances in recent years 2 of them in the past year. That makes it no longer a coincidence.

Sexism and other forms of workplace misconduct or unfairness happens all the time in all the parties. If the NDP is guilty in these cases I am certain there are or have been equivalent situations going on in all of the parties. The NDP is certainly not more guilty than the other parties.

It still looks bad to immediately take management's side dismissing the worker's complaints. While it is possible the claims are false or overblown, abuse of power by superiors, male and female, isn't exactly rare.

One can pick sides after investigation has taken place. The NDP did the right thing in suspending the aid who made and admitted to the crude joke/harassment. If the other complaints had been deemed valid we dont see any reason that the NDP wouldnt also have disciplined the ones found guilty.

How about we encourage the tories and liberals to unionize their staff so they can have the same benefits when complaints arise.

HuffPost agreed to identify neither the MP who approached Trudeau nor the second NDP MP involved. In a statement on Nov. 5, Andrews said he was “confident” that a third-party process “will find that no harassment has occurred.”

The NDP MP who spoke to HuffPost said her decision to speak to Trudeau “happened very quickly.”

“It wasn’t thought out,” she added.

On the bus, the MP said she didn’t discuss her own experience. But in a subsequent meeting with the Liberal and NDP whips she alleged that Pacetti, a Montreal MP, forced himself on her in March.

“It was sex without explicit consent,” she said.

Told of the allegations, Pacetti responded to HuffPost late Monday evening saying his “previous statement still stands.” In his statement on Nov. 5, he said he was “confident” an independent investigation “will exonerate me.”

This MP knew Pacetti from a sports league they were both members of. Both francophone Quebec MPs, she and Pacetti spoke more frequently with each other than with the other unilingual anglophone members. After games, team members would often go out for drinks. One night, Pacetti asked her if she’d like to come back to his hotel room for a drink. She agreed.

“We’d been playing [sports] for a year and a half. He was a friend who was on my team, he wasn’t part of my political party but we took part in a social activity… . I was a member of the team. Yes, I’m a woman, but I’m sure that if he had asked a man to come have another drink after [a game], nobody would be accusing that man of lacking judgment,” she said.

She stressed that hotel rooms for MPs in Ottawa don’t have the same connotation that some might infer.

“These hotels, they are our apartments. Some people live in hotels, some have apartments, some have bought themselves homes. But largely the significance of ‘Come to my hotel room’ is a bit different,” she said.

Once she was in his room, she said, it became clear that he wanted something more. She said she froze. She had been sexually assaulted as a teenager and felt paralyzed when faced with a similar situation.

The sex hurt, she said.

“Three days after the incident, I had trouble sitting down without being in pain.”

She grimaced every time she sat down, feeling pain in her abdomen.

She never confronted Pacetti after the fact. “It was in a box, and we pretended it didn’t exist,” she said.

She never told her own leader, Thomas Mulcair, or any other senior NDP staff about the incident, she said. “While I adore Tom and [whip] Nycole [Turmel] … it’s not with them that I am the closest,” she said.

She didn’t want to lodge a criminal complaint, out of fear the defence would say anything to destroy her, she said, and “in the end, you come out of it worse off.”

After she spoke to Trudeau, she said she agreed to speak with the Liberal whip, Judy Foote, because the Liberals wanted to know exactly what happened.

“I can maybe live with this, but could I live with myself if, for example, in 10 years we discovered that there were 10 or 15 other [victims] since then?”

What she really wants, she said, is for Pacetti to apologize to her and for him to get help.

“If I am able to believe that his excuses are truly sincere, and I see that he is taking actions to ensure he doesn’t hurt other people, for example, if he is in therapy to correct his behaviour towards women, and I see that he is making sincere process, for me that would probably be enough,” she said.

The MP said the Liberals asked her what she wanted them to do. She said they told her an investigation wasn’t going to be easy.

“I told them that in the end what I want is that this doesn’t happen to anyone else — and that I don’t want this to become public,” she said.

She doesn’t want her name to get out in the media. “Every time I am forced to talk about it and to think about it, I relive the emotions, and they are vivid,” she said.

“I don’t want to speak at a school and have a 10-year-old lift his hand up and ask me about this because he read it on the Internet.”

“We never wanted to hurt anybody. Except that we were in this situation where you don’t know what to do, because there is no solution that makes any sense,” she said.

“For a female MP who is harassed or assaulted by a parliamentary colleague, there is nothing to do while you are in active politics, because if you file a criminal complaint, they will destroy your reputation, they will dig all sorts of things out to cast doubt on your credibility and you’ll immediately have no political career.”

No, no its only going to be beginning now, while I believe her approach was compassionate and not vengence based, the debate will now be about weather that was sexual harrassment, sexual assault or wheather she should take responsiblity for not speaking up.

My belief is that while he should do himself a favour and learn something about body language, if she did not say no just allowed him to do as he liked, then I'm sorry but that is not sexual assault or harrassment as described. And I would suggest that she see someone for the clear PTSD that she has from the earlier rape as a teenager, because most people in that end up in that situtation would say, ah I believe you misunderstood my intentions, I came over as a friend.

So now will be the battle between those who think he should gotten explicted consent as she put it, and those who feel like her behavior infantilizes women (personally I'm in camp number 3, that she should seek treatment because clear is has been servely tramatized by being raped in her teens and he should work on paying more attention to body language in the future).

But people are going to ignore all the nausases in this thing, all because Trudeau ignored the wishes of those invovled, even the female MPs did not want these guys removed or ruined, all he had to do was listen to them, and talk to the guys invovled and explain the situtation and to try and understand why these female MPs were upser and to be more observant and sensitive in the future and if they have difficulty with that, do as suggested and get some help with it.

Reading body language? We are a multi cultural society and not everyone understands the body language of everybody else. You dont move to have sex with someone without verbal consent and, normally, after dating them. She wasnt dating this guy.

It could be that the NDP MP regretted having the sexual encounter with Pacetti after the fact since he is married, after all, and this would create a scandal for both of them even if it was consensual.

Or it could be that it wasn't consensual or that there was a grey area between the two. It's hard to know. She says there wasn't proper consent, Pacetti maintains his innocence.

In any event, considering the serious allegations she is making, it's making it look like Trudeau was right to suspend Pacetti from caucus. He could not sit on allegations like this.

Thanks for the link. Clear demonstration of why and how unwanted sexual attention and any non-consenting sexual behavior can be assault or harassment or rape. We cannot with any surety offer anything more than speculative opinion on what occured between the MPs because we don't have all the facts.

If I may...Instead of focusing on the "facts" provided by the media in the case of the female NDP MP, maybe another way of reframing this could be: The incident happened more than 8 months ago. She's still going through a recovery process, and is still trying to deal with the incident. This is not a normal reaction to healthy and consensual sexual activity. I'm kindly asking some of you to try to stop acting like Perry Mason with "facts" and treat this with the level of respect and depth of seriousness that it deserves.

Thanks for the link. Clear demonstration of why and how unwanted sexual attention and any non-consenting sexual behavior can be assault or harassment or rape. We cannot with any surety offer anything more than speculative opinion on what occured between the MPs because we don't have all the facts.

That video should be at every high school college and university and there should be an exam to pass.

There is a heavy emphasis on whether or not what Pacetti did was legal.

BusMP describes their relationship as friendly because they were on the same sports team which was mainly anglophone. Even people who are fluently bilingual like speaking in their mother tongue. It's similar to the feel when meet someone from your community when you are away from home and you find you have mutual friends. Bus MP is young, early to mid 20s, Pacetti is a 52 year old married man that looks it. There was no hint prior to entering the room that he wanted sex. He didn't kiss her in the elevator, there was no exchange of nervous glances of anticipation. In the room she sat on the chair. He did something that made her realize he wanted sex which spooked her so she went to the bathroom. On coming out she tried to walk by him but he grabbed her hand and pulled her onto the bed.

He had no reason to believe she wanted to have sex with him, and every reason to believe that she probably didn't and he is definitely old enough to know which.

Much has been made of the fact that she gave him a condom. Well if you know you are going to have sex whether you want to or not you might as well try to avoid catching an STD or getting pregnant. In that moment she felt intimidated. She states that for three days she grimaced every time she sat down. That is not normal first time sex with someone. In the following days it was like nothing had happened in the sense that he didn't call her, try to get together again. He knew she didn't want to.

The man is 52, he knows what a willing partner looks like and he knows most women don't want to get pounded to the point that they can't sit for three days.

Adultery is wrong and immoral but we know relationships can get complicated, some people even have an understanding if not an open marriage. To a certain extent I respect the right of politicians to have a private life but that pendulum has swung too far.

How a person conducts their private life still reflects on their character and judgement both of which are important in elected officials.

Pacetti is not a man of good judgement or integrity regardless of whether or not he broke the law. We have a right to hold lawmakers to higher standards.

If I may...Instead of focusing on the "facts" provided by the media in the case of the female NDP MP, maybe another way of reframing this could be: The incident happened more than 8 months ago. She's still going through a recovery process, and is still trying to deal with the incident. This is not a normal reaction to healthy and consensual sexual activity. I'm kindly asking some of you to try to stop acting like Perry Mason with "facts" and treat this with the level of respect and depth of seriousness that it deserves.

That aspect has angered me a lot. She hasn't been given sufficient help and guidance. It was sad to read her latest attempt at explanation, her vulnerability is so great. The moment I read it I knew it was going to go badly for her and her fears would be realized.

She has expressed the typical fears and confusion of victims and it is being used against her. Yes she is an adult but she is surrounded by much more mature adults that I expect to know better and that includes the media that has repeated her words in a disjointed manner that makes her seem like an airhead instead of a woman in distress that needs time to cope with her mixed emotions.

That is far more difficult to do after airing all these emotions and accounts of what happened. Pacetti and his lawyers have great material to work with well in advance of any proceedings.

The second MP has not been talking to the press but details of her allegations have beem made public anyway on the basis of BusMP having gone public with her account.

Quote:

As the Star has argued before, the female MPs should not have hesitated to set a bold, empowered example for other women by going public with their stories at a time when society is taking the issue of violence against women more seriously than ever before. The Ghomeshi affair has triggered a long-overdue bout of national soul-searching, angst and anger over sexism, misogyny, harassment and abuse. The MPs’ initial reluctance to go public or even to press their case to a third party in private was discouraging.

It may be discouraging, but all victims have a right to privacy. From the day of the announcement the NDP were claiming to be fearful that the women's identities would come out. If that is true, it was all the more important to guard their privacy and advise them to not comment without first speaking to a trauma consellor who I am sure would have advised not sharing so much private information with the media.

There was no threats of violence, no blackmail, she's not child, believing she was okay with it was reasonable in the circumstance. She wasn't unconscious or out of it i am very sympathetic because she was dealing with trama from her youth, but she's not a child and I refuse to show her the disrespect of treating her like one. Pacetti did nothing wrong here, aside possibly for adultery, but that is not my business.

To suggest this was sexual assault is a slap to the face of real rape victims, I doubt blame her, she's dealing with serious painful issues, of which is doubtful Pacetti knew, but the people who knew should have had a heart to heart with her. Why do you think the NDP didn't want to pereue charges, yes to respect thier confedentiality, but also because no crime was committed.

Look you can't just make consent whatever you want, no means no, trying to make consent whatever you want is irresponsible and puts people in danger because you sow confusion, the laws that are clear and concise are the ones that get followed. Please stop being reckless with peoples safety.

And show women the respect they deserve and don't treat them like infants, she could have said no and she didn't, for understandable reasons of I feel for her, but it doesn't make Pacetti a rapist.

Look Pacetti is a Liberal MPs, I dispise Liberal MPs as a matter of principle, but even he doesn't deserve to this. And making out like he is unfair to the female MP who deserves true and compassion, not people playing politics with her hurt, people who will encourage her to seek help.

This also could mess things up for the other MPs who if its as it sounds might have a real case against Andrews potentially.

Thank you Pondering for showing me some understanding of what I was trying to get across. I did not want to express myself in a partisan way, but my point to reiterate is that if a partner in a sexual encounter is still experiencing trauma after 8 months, then the other party is not in a position to say that he/she did nothing wrong. You did do something wrong, and seriously wrong. You may find sympathy in the court of public opinion, and in a court of law. You may even get your job back. Just don't act like you did nothing wrong. One has to be pretty calloused to assume otherwise.

Look you can't just make consent whatever you want, no means no, trying to make consent whatever you want is irresponsible and puts people in danger because you sow confusion, the laws that are clear and concise are the ones that get followed. Please stop being reckless with peoples safety.

No one is endangered by a broad definition of rape other than people who don't want to make sure what they are doing is consensual and want to play stupid, clueless dude syndrome.

Why do you care so much whether or not what happened is called rape. Is your position that as long as what he did doesn't meet the legal definition of rape then it's okay? The Liberals should have to keep them on as MPs?

I am not saying that the Liberal MP raped her nor am I using any of these other terms to describe the incident. I will leave that for other people to decide for themselves.

Sex is supposed to be a mutually beneficial experience. When one person benefits at the other person's expense, it can leave long lasting negative and violating effects for the other party, and rape/assault'/harassment need not even be a factor at play. Wham Bam Thank you Ma'am can cause long term psychological damage. It may not be rape or assault. It is simply very bad sex, and it can also be extremely violating.

The ONLY reason people ever give for opposing equal marriage is that they want to preserve the traditional family anbd support "family values" (sic.)...but at the very least Pacetti is an adulterer - so that makes him a hypocrit!

Although providing the condom suggests consent it is not determinitive. I am aware of rape cases where the complainant has asked her assailant to wear protection before the act so as to minimize risks.

We also don't know if the media has taken statements she made out of context to put a deliberate spin on the story to try to make her look bad.

Also, the eight months of trauma could be as a direct result of previous traumas in her life, but when we come to these conclusions ourselves, we are downplaying the seriousness of what may have transpired between the two MPs last spring. She could be going through eight months of trauma because of what he did to her.

Craig Oliver was pretty critical of the NDP MP's on Don Martin's show tonight - he pretty much said that while Pacetti may have committed adultery, there is no proof he sexually assaulted the female MP at this point. Don Martin & Paul Wells were a bit surprised by what Oliver said, but he's probably stating what a lot of men will think about this situation if it turns into a he said/she said without proof.

I maintain that Justin Trudeau took a strong stand on this issue by suspending Pacetti (& Andrews) based on claims of what may actually be sexual assault or rape. Trudeau is right that there needs to be a proper investigation and he has given the NDP complainants the benefit of the doubt over his own MP's.

Btw, why don't we talk about what Conservative MP Peter Goldring said last night? It has become a big story on Twitter, and all the journalists were unanimous in condemning Goldring (even the right-wing ones) and the PMO came down on him like a tonne of bricks and made him retract his comments.

Megan Leslie called what Peter Goldring said "Slut Shaming" and said he is trying to blame the female MP's for everything. And Goldring's advice that MP's should secretly wear video-recording equipment to protect themselves has become the most-talked about political story of the past 24 hours. Goldring hid from the press today, and backed out of his appearance last night on Evan Solomon's show.

This incident reveals that it is the Conservative Party that still has the most outdated views on women. Harper has done a good job in recent years in keeping the crazy Reform/Alliance views quiet, but this has let them out again. Hopefully voters will remember it.

Look Pacetti is a Liberal MPs, I dispise Liberal MPs as a matter of principle, but even he doesn't deserve to this.

Which proves what I have been saying for a long time -- that you have such intense, emotional feelings of hatred towards the Liberals that you cannot be objective about the Liberal Party or about Justin Trudeau. Your emotions overcome your reason.

You admit that you have an irrational, emotion-based hatred of an entire group of people based just on their political beliefs, rather than judging them as individuals. A person is supposed to be judged based on the content of their character, remember?

Finally, it's odd that you would defend Pacetti without knowing the facts when the NDP MP may be telling the truth, meanwhile you called Trudeau an "asshole" on the other thread even though he took a strong stand in favour of women's rights.

We also don't know if the media has taken statements she made out of context to put a deliberate spin on the story to try to make her look bad.

I think they put a deliberate spin to sensationalize the story and that in turn is making her look bad. She is genuinely trying to do the right thing but she was too confused to know what that was. In my opinion she has been taken advantage of by all of the people who fed information to the press that brought her to this ill-fated series of interviews.

As Susan Delacourt said on CTV yesterday and as Kady O'Malley said on CBC, the NDP MP's and the leadership of the NDP have been somewhat contradictory and confusing in terms of how they have handled this. That is what puzzles the public and a lot of the journalists. They say they want things kept confidential, but they keep speaking to the media.

Chantal Hébert discusses this issue in her latest column:

--

Excerpt:

On the heels of a string of interviews — given on the condition that the complainant’s name not be reported but nevertheless amounting to a detailed account of the events in dispute — it is difficult to continue to insist, as the NDP has done, that this alleged victim only wants to be left alone by whoever is concerned by the situation.

It was the same MP that initially took the matter up the parliamentary ladder by apprising Trudeau of it last month. By now walking various journalists through a painfully private personal episode, she has raised it to yet a higher level.

She says she never expected her initial conversation with Trudeau to result in the public outing of the alleged Liberal offenders for presumed misconduct.

Now that this has happened and with Pacetti and Andrews in limbo, it may be that she has come to the conclusion that there can be no real closure until further steps are taken to air the matter.